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Old Saturday, April 03, 2010
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Post A quick verdict on Swiss accounts is imperative

By Shaheen Sehbai

WASHINGTON: Someone, somewhere, and quickly, will have to intervene to stop the farce that the country is facing in terms of conflict of interest between the top ranking accused and the top level executioners, who unfortunately are the same people sitting in high offices. The conflict has already turned Attorney General Anwar Mansoor into a casualty.

This conflict is at the root of the current high profile cases against the country’s head of state in the Supreme Court, which has almost paralysed the government and threatens to prolong the uncertainty, which has gripped the country for a long time.

I call it a farce because the SC issues orders and gives judgments against the corrupt but these very people are required and supposed to implement these judgments against themselves, something which cannot happen.

This issue came into the national limelight last Thursday in the Supreme Court when the country’s Attorney General told the apex court that the Law Minister and the Law Ministry were the main obstacles and were not providing him with evidence and documents so he was helpless. The court recorded his statement and summoned the federal law secretary and if he does not appear, the law minister will have to. The casualty was obviously the weaker party.

Nowhere in the world such a situation is allowed to linger on but Pakistan is an exception in almost all such matters. If there is even an iota of suspicion against any public office holder, the first thing which happens is that the office holder steps down to face the law to clear his or her name. In Pakistan, such a tradition does not exist and if provision of immunity exists, it is so forcefully invoked as if that immunity will wash away the charges or the crimes.

What is hurting the country and the political system is that these lingering cases seem to have no end because the government is reluctant to accept the authority of the SC and the restored judges want to establish that the rule of law will henceforth be supreme in the country.

The issue of Swiss cases and whether the president has immunity is a legal matter, which will have to be decided by the Supreme Court. It may take weeks and months. Even if the Swiss cases were to be opened today in Geneva, no decision or judgment should be expected in months and probably years as the process will take its time, given the history of tactical delays, including fake medical certificates, which are so frequently used. Time will also be needed to complete the stages of appeals and further appeals until a judgment becomes final.

What is clear is that so far in Pakistan there is no money laundering case against President Zardari or if there is one, it has not yet come to the high courts or the Supreme Court. Until such a case gets on the SC docket, the issue of immunity will remain undecided.

What we have on record on the Swiss accounts issue so far is the official testimony of the Citigroup Chairman John Reed before the US Congressional Sub-Committee on Money Laundering in November 1999. Reed, who was also the co-chairman of Citibank, admitted at the hearing that controls over Citibank’s private banking unit, which deals with clients who have assets of $3m or more, had been unsatisfactory. He said there had been “oversight lapses” in the early 1990s, but since then, the bank had taken steps to rectify this.

Citibank has been unable to confirm whether bank employees verified that Zardari had a level of wealth sufficient to support the size of the accounts that he was opening, the congressional committee report said.

The most talked about case is that of $60 million in Citibank belonging to Zardari. Most of the evidence in the 12 Swiss boxes also pertains to these accounts. The fact is that Zardari has never denied that he owned that account or the money parked there. When this story was first broken by me in July 2002, Benazir Bhutto herself had been interviewed by me and she had denied that any Citibank account existed but then she had more to say.

She had told me on record: “The (Pakistani) regime has alleged that some companies belong to my husband. There is a difference between company accounts and Senator Zardari’s accounts. So, I have still to see a statement where it has been said Senator Zardari has 60 million dollars. But, even if Senator Zardari had 60 million dollars, I would put the question, where is the corruption? From where did the proceeds come? But that is a separate issue.”

She continued: “I go further and say that even if the regime alleges that Senator Zardari took 60 million dollars, they should be able to come up with a contract from which he took it. After all, it is a huge amount of money. These are baseless stories, and they have been deliberately spread because I believe that military hardliners saw the Pakistan People’s Party and myself as a threat to their ambitions, to take on the West, after they took on the Soviet Union and that’s why they destabilised both my governments.”

Before the Senate Sub-Committee, Citigroup Co-Chair John Reed had stated that he had been advised by Citibank officials, as he was preparing for a trip to Pakistan in February 1994, that there were troubling accusations concerning corruption surrounding Zardari, that he should stay away from him, and that he was not a man with whom the bank wanted to be associated. Yet one year later, the private bank opened three accounts for Zardari in Switzerland. Reed told the sub-committee staff that when he learned of the Zardari accounts, he thought the account officer must have been “an idiot”.

In December 2009, the spokesman of President Zardari, Farhatullah Babar, had officially claimed that the US Congressional Sub-committee on Money Laundering had cleared Asif Ali Zardari, as it had found no evidence that Citibank or any other private bank knowingly helped Salinas (of Mexico), or any other criminals (who included Zardari) launder dirty money.

This official statement had been released by the spokesman of the president, Farhatullah Babar, in response to questions sent to him about the details provided by the Citibank’s top administration to the US Sub-committee on Money Laundering in November 1999.

Babar, in his response, had stated, and correctly, that the US sub-committee had met to scrutinise the Citibank’s practices and not to probe Asif Ali Zardari for money laundering.

While Farhatullah Babar was right that the US committee was not probing Zardari’s accounts, it was the Citibank which had taken Zardari’s case as a study and example of its failure in monitoring offshore accounts. But what it established beyond doubt was that Zardari had accounts and had at least $60 million in them.

No one talked of where the money came from although all details of how the accounts were opened and who was involved were given by the Citibank chairman. This is the issue which the Pakistani courts have to decide. As Zardari had, at least, $60 million, they have to ask him where the money came from, whether it was transferred legally out of Pakistan, whether it was illegal and was the result of kickbacks, whether he had paid taxes on it and whether he had declared it as his genuine wealth.

Until this issue is cleared within Pakistan, and now it appears the Supreme Court will have to do this quickly, the uncertainty will not be wished away.

The easiest, or probably the most difficult thing for Zardari would be to come clean on his own and let the people know now. Because if we follow the pattern that we have seen in his last two years, he finally gives in at the very end, when the crunch comes and by that time a lot of damage has already been done. And he never gets any credit at the end.

The president will have to come clean and declare that he is not guilty, no matter if no one could prove any case against him in the last many years.

The other solid argument is that he has not been proven innocent either. No one took his cases to any logical end and they remained pending and open until the NRO came when these cases were withdrawn or forgotten and now they have been reopened. They need a quick closure, a verdict whether Zardari is guilty or not.
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